Samsung Soul SGH U900 review

The supplied earphones though are tinny, with a  high-end bias with a lack of bass. There’s no graphic equaliser to help improve the bias and since the Soul doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack plug, you’re pretty much stuck with them, unless you use the Bluetooth A2DP to take the wireless ’phones option. The loudspeaker is also average limited quality mobile fare.

You’ll need the headphones however for the radio aerial. The onboard FM radio will search for stations either automatically or manually and includes RDS, so it can identify most of the main stations for you when you come across them and you can save up to 21 of them as favourites.

A stylish mobile phone

There’s a very generous 100MB of memory on board for pics, tunes and video, and if you need to, you can augment this with a MicroSD card, though there’s none provided.

The online browser is fine, though free of any innovations, and there’s HSDPA data connectivity with up to 7.2Mbps download speed if your network can handle it. Oh, and there’s an extra camera on the front for video calling too. Other stuff includes an RSS reader, a document viewer for Microsoft Office, PowerPoint and PictBridge for linking directly to a printer.

There’s not much to complain about, except for the minor gripes already mentioned, although it has to be said that the battery life isn’t great, especially if you make much use of the camera, and it’s tri rather than quad band, which could make a difference to frequent travellers.

Like LG’s Chocolate, the Soul is very much a winner in the style stakes, even if technology-wise it doesn’t really break any new ground. But new technology isn’t necessarily what makes a phone hot, and with its stylish good looks, distinctive touch pad and quality camera, it’s got plenty to recommend it.